In the Lots' of us mortals, who bargain for Books.

There's Ruskin to keep one exclaiming 'What next?'
There's Browning to puzzle, and Gilbert to chaff,
And Marcus Aurelius to soothe one if vexed,
And good MARCUS TVAINUS to lend you a laugh;
There be capital tomes that are filled with fly-hooks,
And I've frequently found them the best kind of Books.



THE SONNET



Poet, beware! The sonnet's primrose path
Is all too tempting for thy feet to tread.
Not on this journey shalt thou earn thy bread,
Because the sated reader roars in wrath:
'Little indeed to say the singer hath,
And little sense in all that he hath said;
Such rhymes are lightly writ but hardly read,
And naught but stubble is his aftermath!'

Then shall he cast that bonny book of thine
Where the extreme waste-paper basket gapes,
There shall thy futile fancies peak and pine,
With other minor poets, pallid shapes,
Who come a long way short of the divine,
Tormented souls of imitative apes.